Public Service Announcement #1

“Hi,” I said, “I’m John.”
“Martha,” she replied, “pleased to meet you.” We shook hands, her warm skin and sparkling eyes causing a frisson down my spine. This speed dating evening was the first I’d been to and, so far, it was going well.
“So tell me,” I said, “what do you do for a living?”
“Oh, I’m a shoe monitor.” Martha replied with a smile. I must have looked rather baffled for she laughed; a pretty sound like tinkling bells. “It’s a new position that some high-up at London Underground invented.” She explained, “I go up and down the carriages and if I see someone with their feet on the seats I remove them.”
I was temporarily at a loss. “That must, er, have its moments?” I managed, weakly. Martha, who had leant over to rummage in her large, shapeless handbag, looked up at me and grinned with enthusiasm.
“Oh, its much more rewarding than you’d imagine,” she said, laying a massive, heavy and wickedly sharp looking meat cleaver on the table between us. “But the blood’s a bugger to get out of the seat fabric.”

Welcome to the 34,221,498th Blog Post on the iPad

That figure at the top’s probably out of date by the time you read this.

Firstly, a disclaimer. This post is being written straight off the top of my head, only a couple of hours after I wore out the F5 key refreshing the various feeds from Apple’s event. I’m just smooshing ideas around in my head. The likelihood is that I’ve overlooked some things and will be calamitously  wrong about others. Continue on at your own risk.

So, this iPad then. Is it the revolutionary device that will destroy all netbooks and relegate the printed word to the dark ages, or is it just a steroid-inflated iPod Touch?

Let me start with one thing that Steve Jobs said right at the beginning of his keynote (according to the Engadget liveblog). He said, and I’m paraphrasing here, that if there were to be a third category of device, somewhere between a smartphone and a laptop, it would have to be far better at doing some key tasks, and he cited browsing, email, video, ebooks and photo viewing as examples of those tasks. He said that some people thought that the netbook would fit into this category, but that the netbook wasn’t better at anything. He got a big laugh for that, but I think it’s the bedrock for his entire philosophy for this new device.

Let me explain. A lot of people, myself included, dismissed netbooks when they first appeared as having too-tiny screens and too-slow processors. And then I actually got one. The thing that most people overlook (and again, I’m one of them) is how far hardware has outstripped software, particularly operating system software. Consider Windows, however distasteful that may be. Back in the mid-90’s, we had the first pentiums, running at the ungodly speed of 75MHz. They were packed with 16 megs of memory and sported (if you were lucky) one  gigabyte hard disks. And they ran Windows 95. In the intervening 15 years, we’ve seen ‘98, 2000, XP, Vista and, now, Windows 7. Quite how they get to 7 when the one before 95 was 3.1 I don’t know, but I digress.

The recommended system requirements form Win95 were these; 486 processor (We’ll assume DX/4 100 for the sake of argument), 8mb RAM, 55mb hard disk space. For Windows 7 they are; 1GHz processor, 2Gb RAM, 20Gb hard disk. Discounting processor generations, that’s a  ten-fold increase in speed, 256 times as much memory and about 375 times as much space on disk. Seems a lot.

Now consider the last two computers I built. Coincidentally, one was in 1995 and the second was last year (I kid you not). The 1995 vintage had a 486DX/4 100, 8mb RAM and a 500mb HDD stuffed within it. That’s spot on for processor and memory and nearly ten times the amount of disk required for Win95, Nice. Last year’s box contained a 3.2GHz processor, 8Gb RAM and  2TB of HDD. Hmm. That’s three times the processing grunt needed for Redmond’s latest offering, four times the RAM and, well, I won’t need to worry about disk space for a while. Oh, and the processor’s got four cores, so, erm, never mind. You get the point.

In any case, I run Linux, exclusively, so I don’t give a fig for what Microsoft say I need. Ubuntu runs perfectly well on all the computers in the house, including my netbook. What Mr Jobs probably won’t want to hear is that OSX also runs on the netbook – I’ve tried it (for academic purposes only). In fact, it runs faster than Ubuntu. I’ll put that down to the extra work they’ve done on optimising their code and the fact that all but the barest minimum of drivers are loaded. It’s a lovely OS. So why didn’t Saint Steve stick it in his tablet? 

Of course, other than eye candy, the OS’s real job is to provide applications with the resources they require and this is what really kills your PC. Remember the old days, when you had a 14″ CRT monitor running at 640×480 with only room for one app on the screen? No tabbed browsing? No rich media content? Then Nescape went and spoiled it and Flash came along jumping up and down for attention and… All of this stuff eats memory and, to get back on point, it’s this sort of thing that Apple have neatly and elegantly avoided.

By refusing to put a “proper” operating system on the thing and saddling it with a single-threaded environment, Apple have allowed the minimal OS to assign every available resource to the task at hand. It doesn’t need to worry about window management, about allocating succicient system memory or CPU cycles to background processes. It’s just “here you go, mate, all you can eat” to whichever app is on screen.

Now this is no bad thing for a “media” device, like the iPod, but if we’re talking about a proper computer there are issues. For example, as an eBook reader it looks beautiful, but what if I want to write an essay and I’m using some eBooks as reference. Can I alt-tab and flick between the word processor and the book? Can I switch to my Twitter client for a 5 minute break, then bring up my email? All without saving (or losing) my essay? Will I have to reopen the word processor each time? From what I’ve seen of the interface, it does fairly fly along, but it’s only doing one thing at a time. If you can stick a keyboard on it (and you can) people will expect it to act like a real computer, which I don’t think it can. (Please note, I would *love* to be proved wrong on this).

What Apple’s engineers have cleverly done is something like the Emperor’s new clothes. They’ve shown the public a technically inferior product (My 2-year-old netbook has a faster, if less efficient, processor), made it look stunning and given it enough polish that it excels in areas that present well. I don’t believe it will be anywhere near as versatile as a netbook.

That’s not to say I don’t appreciate the design or functionality that they have squeezed in – Apple are masters of the UI and their hardware is unparalleled. But let me tell you what I wish they’d done. The form factor is stunning. Leave that alone. But stick a proper processor in there – an Intel mobile dual core jobbie. And a decent amount of RAM, say 2GB. A 64GB SSD is OK, but that should be the baseline. And for god’s sake, a full version of OSX. Put it under the covers, by all means, the touch UI is clearly a winner, but let me run real software, like Scrivener and (erk) MS Office on it. Oh, and this is the killer, stick a displayport on the side, so I can drive my 24″ widescreen monitor with the thing.

Obviously that wish list would have blown the size constraints, not to mention giving it the battery life of, er, my G1 phone, and it would have got so hot that you wouldn’t be able to hold it. But it would have been amazing. What we have now is not so much more than an oversized iPod Touch after all and, while that’s not such a bad thing, it’s not going to do nearly everything that I (and I have some pretty strenuous requirements) want it to do. In fact, its pricing, which is pretty spectacular by Apple standards, actually makes the 64Gb iPod Touch at £290 seem like a good deal. But then what would I use that for? Bejeweled Blitz and Scrabble, that’s what. Those would be the two most expensive games I’ve ever bought.

So thanks, Apple, but no. Right now I’ll take a pass on the newest jewel in your crown. I may covet it like crazy and I’ll surely go all dribbly and incoherent the first time I get to play with one, but it’s not for me. I’ll stick to my cheap, slow, ugly netbook with its outdated UI metaphor (whatever the hell one of those is) and wait for the next big thing.

GBN

NaNoWriNoMore

It’s 5.44AM on the first of December 2009, the first morning in exactly a month that I’m not travelling to work with the spectre of producing close to 2,000 words before I return home sitting on my shoulder. So, what am I doing? Yeah, right. Maybe I’ve formed a habit.

I had not heard of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo to the initiated) until the first of November this year. A chance comment on Twitter piqued my interest, so I had a look at the site. I’ve made my desire to write a kind of open secret for a while now and the aggressive target NaNoWriMo sets – 50,000 words in thirty days – looked like just the sort of stick to whup my lazy ass into action. Coincidentally, while reading my little boy a Mr Man book that evening, the germ of an idea had occurred to me, so I thought sod it, I’m going to have a go.

So I did. And I ‘won’. By the time I’d written ‘The End’ on the thing yesterday afternoon, NaNo’s official word count doohicky clocked me at 50,009 words. You might say I squeaked it: I’m just gutted that I missed the target by nine. I wrote a novel in a month!

Except, of course, I haven’t. I made the mistake, shortly after finishing, to pay a visit to a real writer’s blog, on which he’d posted an excerpt from his first published novel. Oh my. What I’ve done is lay down the roughest of rough sketches, from which a novel may or may not be born at some point in the future. The story’s there all right; it has a beginning, a sort-of middle and an end but it just poured out of my head in real time. It countains little by way of research (there’s simply no time) or structure. I imagine that, as soon as I start to re-read the thing I’ll be cringing under the weight of continuity errors, poor characterisarion, wooden dialogue and so on. And that’s all before we get to the question of the prose.

The writing I most admire and enjoy is evocative and inspiring. It manages, by using exactly the right words in precisely the right places, to delight and carry the reader along on a journey he or she is helpless to resist. I often wonder if this comes naturally to those authors who do it well, if that’s the way their inner voices sound. Mine certainly doesn’t. I’ll be polishing and honing my NaNoWriMo manuscript for many months to come before I’m even halfway satisfied with it. Somebody famous once said that no art is finished, it’s merely abandoned, the secret being knowing when to stop tinkering with a thing. Hmm. We’ll see.

So, for now, I’m pretty pleased. If nothing else, NaNoWriMo has allowed me to prove to myself that I can see a story through from start to end, that I can be regimented, and that my imagination still works a bit. “The Other Snow” is the largest single, coherent body of words I’ve ever produced. It may not be perfect, may not even be any good as a story, but it IS there, and it wasn’t at this time last month.

GBN.

What a Soppy Bugger

So here was I, working from home, with the little one asleep in her cot. My wife and firstborn had gone shopping. Nice. Peaceful.

Then, rather earlier than normal, a chirrup from the baby monitor. Bugger. I gave her a minute but this was clearly not the sort of wakeful blip that would resolve itself neatly into a further half hour’s sleep. Wearily, I saved what I was doing, sighed, and stumped off up the stairs.

She was sitting up in her fluffy blue growbag, looking pitiful and emitting small sobs of discomfort.

“What’s the matter, sausage?” I asked. She waved vaguely at the side of her head, said something like “ears” and contrived to look at me accusingly. I scooped her up and made the generic, gentle cooing noises these situations require, then carried her downstairs and flopped onto the sofa, rocking and hushing. Presently she cooched into my chest and sighed herself back into a snuffling slumber. Ten points for Dad Of The Year.

I half sat/half lay there for a while, contemplating the perfect curve of her nose, the one chubby pink cheek I could see, and her gentle snoring. I figuratively patted myself on the back and basked in the warm glow of lucky sodedness. Then things began to ache. What had seemed a comfortable slump revealed itself to be rather closer to the stress positions favoured at Guantanamo Bay. My thighs began to burn, my right arm went dead, and I had to keep my head up at an unnatural angle as I’d failed to grab a cushion upon arrival. The damned things were taunting me now, sitting invitingly just out of reach, looking plush and smirking.

Minutes dawdled by, each one an exquisite hell, and each worse than the last. A bead of sweat bloomed on my forehead, and still my angelic progeny snored on, the cutest little pneumatic drill you’ve ever seen. I did not have the heart to wake her up, but silently begged for some external influence to do it for me; a dog barking, someone shoving a pizza menu through the door, my wife returning home. Please, anything to alleviate this maddening discomfort!

Eventually, after about three days, I heard the sound I’d prayed for – the car pulling onto the drive. Then the epiphany hit me; I really did not want this to end. These private, intimate moments between parent and child are all too rare, especially when you have more than one of the little darlings, and they become rarer all the time as they have the temerity to grow up. You soon realise how each one must be cherished while they last. I noticed my eyes were wet.

I hugged my daughter close, kissed her head, breathed the smell of her hair and held that breath. I wanted to freeze the moment, to imprint every detail of it into my memory for ever.

Then the real world, in the shape of the wee man, barrelled in through the front door and the spell was broken. In the end, all we have are memories. That’s going to be one of the best.

I’ve Found My G1-Spot!

I’ve had my T-Mobile G1 for ten days now, and I can honestly say I’m over the moon with it.

Aside from the obvious battery issues (of which I was painfully aware prior to my purchasing decision) and a slight annoyance with the volume keys accidentally changing the ringer volume, it’s my perfect phone. An iPhone killer!

Halt! Before all you iPhans beat me to death with your sleek metal marvels, please notice that I said that it’s MY perfect phone, not THE perfect phone. It does everything I need from a mobile device with aplomb. The “iPhone killer” bit was hyperbole, I’ll admit it.

Because, frankly, it’s not a challenger to Apple’s minimalist gem, and nor should it try to be.

Whether the hardware inside the thing measures up to the iPhone or not is a subject I stopped caring about when I was twelve. Whether it’s got as many apps available for it is another “my Dad’s bigger than your Dad” argument and should be disdainfully ignored.

What the iPhone is, that the G1 can never ever be, is a style icon. It is the ultimate symbol of geek-chic. Maybe the fabled Palm Pre can take Apple on in the status symbol stakes. Maybe. But the G1 is, at best, utilitarian, and that’s where the argument ends. It could organise your day, do your work for you, then pour you a beer afterwards, and Apple officionados would still look down their perfect, unblemished noses at it and sneer.

Mow, it is possible that future Android devices from the likes of Samsung or, particulary, Sony, will start to approach the quality of build and design that Apple seem to produce so effortlessly, but they will be constrained by Android itself, which relies upon physical buttons.

*shocked silence*

Yes, I know it’s old fashioned, but all current Android phones share the same cluster of five hardware buttons for Home, Call/End, Back and Menu functions, and it looks like these are to be the trademark of the O/S. In fact, they’re reminiscent of nothing so much as the old Palm devices. Which is a good thing.

So, what does the G1 do well? Firstly, and BY FAR most importantly, it syncs up seamlessly with gmail. This may seem like a little thing to those of you who live your lives inside Apple’s comforting coccoon, but for us troglodytes it’s a marvel. Let me paint you a picture; I have three computers at home which I log onto regularly or semi-regularly. I’ll also occasionally log onto an open-access machine at work. My netbook and my main laptop both run Ubuntu, my Wife’s laptop is still stuck on Windows (feel dirty just typing it). All three boxes run the Thunderbird email client with gmail sync and Lightning calendar plugins.

Together with the G1, this means that I now have, for the first time ever, a unified view of all my email, a single calendar and one, YES ONE, contact list, that can be updated from any computer, or my phone, or the internet, and remains gloriously up to date and correct!

That, and the ability to make phone calls, was pretty much enough for me, but the G1 does much, much more. I’ve got a decent eBook reader, productivity software, a Twitter client (very important, that one!), a few challenging and addictive games, a media player that can fathom the mysteries of Ogg Vorbis (also important), full turn-by-turn GPS, a good SSH client and – oh yes, nearly forgot this one – Google Docs. I’ve spent the afternoon scouring three computers plus a bunch of NAS disk, collecting all my bits of writing, and sticking them onto Google Docs. Now I can access and edit all of that from anywhere, too. Simples!

Those last two are really the killer add-on applications of the G1 for me. Purely because it has that hardware keyboard. It actually becomes a functional word processor; more than capable of taking down quick notes or ideas, or even of standing up to an hour’s typing on the train to work. I won’t claim that it’s like using a real PC keyboard, but it’s an order of magnitude better than the on-screen version, both for tactile feedback and, perhaps more importantly, because you can see so much more of what’s on the screen. This is particularly relevant for the SSH terminal (sorry if people nod off here), when seeing only three or four lines of output is practically useless. I get an 80×24 terminal in full screen mode, which is only six lines shorter than I commonly use on a real PC.

So we’ve established, I hope, that the G1 is a very capable device. Maybe in some areas better than the iPhone. But that doesn’t matter. Its (and here I mean all Android devices, not just the G1) real target should be Nokia.

According to the most recent Gartner research I could find, the iPhone has just under 11% of the smartphone market share. RIM has nearly 20%, but they’re in their own ivory tower, in which the corporate environment is sewn up tighter than Peter Rose’s wallet*. Nokia, on the other hand, lost nearly 4%, year-on-year, to just over 41% of the total market share. That’s still an absolute boatload of punters left to take a shot at, and if Nokia owners compare Android to their woefully out of date S60 handsets with even the slightest smidgen of open-mindedness, envirophone are going to be doing a very brisk trade in Nokia handsets indeed.

That’s my tuppence-worth anyhow. It’s obviously early days yet, so I may do a comparison after a few months. Feel free to lambast me with your thoughts.

GBN

*You probably don’t know Peter Rose but he is very, VERY, tight.

Hulk Mad!

Gah! On my way home today, I have witnessed not one, but two of the little acts of idiocy which serve to depress most of us “normal” folk as we go about our lives.

First was Mr Need-to-Urgently-Go-and-Get-Into-the-Train (which is far too long, so we’ll just call him Nuggit). You’ve all seen the type, I’m sure; so eager are the Nuggits to eke whatever tiny advantage their closed little minds perceive in getting into a carriage before everyone else that they totally ignore the patiently queueing crowd and either try to get around the front of it from the side or, and this was the technique favoured by today’s Nuggit, just walk straight down the middle as the queue parts to allow passengers off.

This, obviously, means that those wishing to disembark cannot, because there’s a Nuggit in the way, slavering to get past them like a fat kid at a sweet shop door. The Nuggit, of course, doesn’t even realise the intense aggravation it is causing to the general population, partly because of its insatiable lust to be First On, but mainly because it is stupider than a sock full of worms.

Eventually, of course, everyone will achieve their objective and momentarily unite in their tutted hatred of the Nuggit, drifting through life in its smug little cloud of self-centredness.

Sadly, tonight, the nugget emerged unscathed. I’m quite solid. My favoured technique when dealing with these pests is to pay them as much attention as they pay everyone else, and just walk through them. Tonight’s passengers were rather more restrained (yes, AND civilised…).

These idiots deserve the same fate as those unable to use escalators (either standing on the left, milling about like sheep right at the end, or both), the fools who forget that there are ticket barriers to negotiate before they arrive at their pathetic jobs and then forget where they put their ticket and, oh, aren’t I silly? No, you’re a blight on society, now get out of the way. And let’s not forget the Blackberry Zombie which shambles along aimlessly; limited, myopic, intellect focussed entirely upon its tiny plastic master, leaving pregnant ladies and the blind in its wake.

The solution is simple. Summary execution. This would, at a stroke, alleviate the problem and make everyone else feel much better about their day. Somebody tip Boris the wink.

Then, to top it all, when I changed trains, I was greeted by this: (not sure where the picture’s going to show up – I’m writing this on my phone)

It looked like some oik had bought the roll, picked out the bits they liked and just dumped the rest for someone else to clear up. They couldn’t even be bothered to put the bits in the bag.

I’m afraid I just can’t understand that at all. Is it stupidity, intentional meanness, laziness, or purely a total disregard for everyone else?

At least with the Nuggits, there’s some sort of higher brain function occurring (I assume), but what sort of moron, past the age of five, just drops something when they’ve finished with it?

Whichever poor bugger has to scrape the mess up tonight should be entitled, in a fit of Old Testament justice, to go around to the perp’s house and shit in his bed.

Come on everybody, let’s make a bit of an effort, eh? We’ve all got to live together and it’s only going to get more crowded (unless Boris takes my suggestion on-board…)

God, I’m a grumpy bastard. Hate to think what I’ll be like when I get to add “old” to that description.

/vent

GBN

We Took Four Carboard Tubes…

There’s a danger that this blog will turn into nothing more than a string of maudlin, navel-gazing diatribes but I don’t really care. Read this post; it’s important.

I got an email today from one of my closest friends at University. Someone I’ve kept in touch with (badly) for, oh, sixteen years-ish. That’s nearly, but not quite, half my life.

Anyway, a couple of the guys he lived with at Uni were Matt and Chris; twins, American and funny as all hell. Not stereotypical brash frat-boys, but quieter, gentler and both entirely genuine. I thought I’d met Matt about three times before someone told me he had an identical twin and that it was actually Chris that I’d been drunkenly waffling on to for the last half an hour. I guess they were both used to that sort of thing, he took it with good grace, called me a twat, and a good night was had by all.

For those who’ve seen the Fast Show, Matt and Chris looked rather like Denzil Dexter, without quite so much hair. The programme started when we were in our second year, so they were both christened “Denzil” from there on. Denzil could play a mean game of pool.

They were both doing masters degrees, so when our group left, they stayed on an extra year, and unfortunately lost touch with my friend. He’s been trying, sporadically and unsuccesfully, to track them down for the last twelve years (we were at the bleeding edge of email back then, remember). Until last week, when he discovered that Chris died, unexpectedly, almost a year ago.

I can’t really explain how that’s made me feel, other than stunned. I know people die all the time, but Chris was only 39. On a purely selfish level, that’s a little too close to home, but more importantly, it’s robbed the world of a truly good man. Not someone I knew well, but someone I considered a friend and who was a source of happiness and brightness whenever he was around. No-one had a bad word to say about Chris.

Funnily enough, we had a get-together a few weeks ago and spent a goodly while reminiscing about the old days in general and Chris and Matt in particular. My brain’s put that all in a very different context now.

If there can be positives in these situations, you have to take them. We are now back in touch with Matt, which is a great thing, and probably an excuse for more beer in the near future. It’s also put a new resonance on any time I get to spend with friends and loved ones.

None of us really knows how long we’ve got here, so let’s make the most of whatever time we have and cherish those people who make us happy and who are too often taken for granted.

The great shame is that it takes tragedy to bring these realisations about but, once there, it’s important to act on them and to try to keep the feelings fresh for as long as possible (for they will inevitably fade – that’s the nature of memory). Go and tell someone that you love them today. As many people as you can, in fact. And mean it.

Here’s to Chris; a truly gentle man and someone we won’t ever forget.

Followfriday (Part 1)

If you already use twitter, you can probably skip this mammoth post and go straight to Part 2, when it appears, which will be my actual #followfriday list. Or you can keep reading and see if my experience tallies in any way with your own. Hell, if it doesn’t, let me know - I’m intrigued by the twitter phenomenon, so tell me what it is about it that floats your boat.

I joined twitter on the 8th of February 2009 (according to http://whendidyoujointwitter.appspot.com/) purely due to an article in a Sunday magazine which listed some celebrities who used the service. It was the first time I’d heard of it. While I have a Facebook page, it rarely gets used. FriendsReunited was joined then forgotten. I’ve never been into Myspace and the “professional” equivalents like LinkedIn just piss me off. I can’t even be bothered to keep up with my email most of the time. In short, while I definitely class myself as a nerd, I’ve never been interested in using technology to communicate (I imagine my wife would say that’s true of my mouth, too. Let’s say I can be fairly taciturn and leave it there, OK?)

Anyway, I remember well my first look at the twitter website. It was a Sunday evening, in bed, on my Nokia N810. What I saw: a page full of random comments by random people. I frowned and ploughed through a couple of pages. What bollocks was this? My wife, reading an actual book next to me, looked over, turned her nose up at it and resumed the physical act of turning pages. I can’t say I blamed her. Determined to understand it though, if only to discount it later, I created an account and went to sleep.

The next morning, I had another go on the train to work. I figured out the “following” premise pretty quickly(I’m not as stupid as I look) and picked up @neilhimself, @JohnCleese, @Wossy, @stephenfry, @RealDMitchell and @elimanning. I watched their updates for a day or so. Which is to say I watched @stephenfry do amazing things with 140 characters on a fairly frequent basis, @Wossy tweet what he was eating or who he was playing tennis with, @neilhimself plug whatever public events he or his books were happening in the near future (sorry, I absolutely adore Neil Gaiman’s writing, but his twitter feed comes across as an advertising stream at times. When he does tweet something non-promotional, it’s invariably a nugget of beautiful prose. EDIT – I guess all the advertising was basically the run-up to the Coraline release. He’s much more himself now, and who am I to gripe about someone with an amazing talent promoting their product?). @RealDMitchell and @elimanning remained silent (I lie - just looked - @elimanning tweeted “pro bowl was fun” on the 9th, and @RealDMitchell tweeted once on the 9th and once on the 10th!). I had my first Twitter epiphany:

Twitter is for getting a closer look at geeky celebrities‘ lives.

Cool. Happy with my discovery, I started following as many celebs as I could find. It quickly became obvious that most were either using it as a self-promotional tool, tweeting such inanity that I quickly gave up on them, or not tweeting at all. I won’t name and shame the offenders. I did, however, find a few twitterers who entertained me - @ICHCheezburger, @darthvader, @charltonbrooker, @donttrythis and @ferretprincess.

And, for a week or so, that was that. I’d log on every now and then, tweet what I was having for lunch, and check who @wossy was playing tennis with. Then my wife’s sneers began to register. Why exactly was I doing this? I’ve never been at all interested in celebrity gossip, so why was I cyber-stalking these people, and wasting my time while doing it? But, rather than jack the whole thing in (did I mention I’m a geek? I tend not to let go of shiny new toys in a hurry), I decided that it could have one more chance. I just needed to refocus my lense.

Fatefully, almost as I had that thought, @neilhimself tweeted a recommendation for a bunch of fellow authors also active on Twitter. I’ve always admired writers, and anyone recommended by Mr Gaiman deserves a look, right? They were, in no particular order, @nalohopkinson, @david_hewson @doctorow, @Harkaway, @StevenGould and, nestled in there like a cuckoo’s egg, @ememess. Now, before you get the wrong idea here, these are ALL excellent people who write wonderfully and deserve to be followed. Do it. Now.

@ememess is just, well, different. He gets the blame for the rest of this.

To my shame, I’d never heard of any of these guys or their books. Since leaving school, I’ve grown lazy with reading. I eagerly fall, with small squeaks of glee, upon Terry Pratchett’s two books per year (also follow @terryandrob, by the way), seem to be inheriting Ian Rankin’s back catalogue from my Mother-in-law, and pick up the odd title recommended by my wife. Mainly, this lack of literary ambition is due to family, work, and my long list of nerdy pursuits, but I decided that enough was enough, and set about gathering samples of these newly-discovered writers‘ work. I’ve now got two shelves full, which I’m getting through. Slowly. But with constant and growing enjoyment. There followed my second Twepiphany;

Twitter is for expanding your horizons, whatever they may be.

I could have left it there. I was happy with my hoard of reading material, my Twitter stream was pretty much guaranteed to contain something witty or educational or thought-provoking whenever I looked at it, and I’d cut down on the cyber-diarrhoea I myself been inflicting on no-one in particular, confining my updates to those that fell close to my own definitions of “worthy“.

I’d noticed that a few of the (famous or published or both, I’ll remind you) folk I was following had followed me back, which I assumed to just be common courtesy - @stephenfry is following about 55,000 people. Ego-massaging though that was, I didn’t kid myself that they were actually reading my tweets.

Then, one day, I tweeted something acerbic about a dickhead on an escalator. When I checked my feed a little later, I found that @ememess had re-tweeted me. Erm. OK. That was a little odd. I did a mental reboot. So. Firstly, he *was* reading my tweets (or, at least, that one). Secondly, he’d thought either what I’d said or the way I’d phrased it was of sufficient quality to share with the rest of his followers. I was taken abit aback. In a very nice way. I was reading one of his books at the time, and I sent him a message (an @reply , in our terms), and he replied back. Far out. A man who has written a number of best-sellers (international best-sellers, his book jackets go to pains to point out ;-)) having an almost conversation with li’l old me.

So that was kinda cool, and I showed anyone who I though gave half a crap the tweet-from-the-famous-author, and they looked at me like I was a loon.

But they didn’t get it. And they still don’t get Twitter. While @ememess taking the time to respond to me was great, from a fan’s point of view (and I really don’t do the blithering sycophant thing), it represented much more than that to me, and ushered in the third Twepiphany;

You can actually meet new people on Twitter!

I’ve admitted, in a prior blog, just how bad I am at forging new relationships. Always have been, ever since I was little. Without being conceited, I’m fairly intelligent and personable, but put me in a room of strangers and I disappear. You know those tales of people so shy and quiet they become invisible? That’s me. But in print, my tongue doesn’t get in the way of what I want to say; and I can pull it off! Sometimes, I’m even a bit funny (Self praise is no praise, I know…).

So, anyway, here I was, with one person that I didn’t actually know in real life prepared to talk to me. The trouble was, I didn’t have anything much to say to him. Most of @ememess’s tweets are atomic little pearls of content. Amusing, off-the-wall, thought-provoking, whatever, but they’re not conversation starters. Other than “That’s really great, Mike!”, there aren’t that many adequate responses, and as I said, a sycophant I am not. And Twitter stagnated again for a few days.

I should mention that, at this point, I was making a great effort to read every single blessed tweet that my chosen followees uttered. Train journeys to and from work were spent feverishly grazing the history of the web interface (yup, I hadn’t even discovered the pantheon of Twitter clients yet). It was my version of reading the paper. I’d started following a few other authors on @ememess’s general recommendation, including @sarahjpin, with whom he bantered fairly frequently, and I enjoyed watching them squabble. Then I looked at @ememess’s actual feed. Not just the stuff I saw, but the stuff he sends to other people. People I wasn’t following. And I looked at @sarahjpin’s feed. And blow me down if there weren’t an awful lot of the same names frequently appearing on both lists! The most frequent abusers were @eBeth, @elliottbeth, @juliansimpson, @cherrymorello and @abiblackmore.”In for a penny”, I thought, and followed the lot. Now you must follow them as well. Immediately.

And all of a sudden, it made sense! Perfect, logical, sense, like the first time you actually saw a magic eye picture. The fourth, and penultimate, twepiphany;

Twitter’s just a big chat-room!

Here were all these people, mostly writers, musicians or artists, but all amazingly creative and adept at using 140 character to convey meaning, just bouncing off each other. All day long. It was like being back at university, in that heady mix of untapped potential; a bunch of bright people just being themselves, for the sole purpose of making each other laugh. Now that I was following them all, I was seeing the whole picture, rather than random details here and there. The ebb and flow of one enormous, evolving, infinite conversation. This was great! So I dipped my toe in, messaged a few of them, and they welcomed me right in. In no time, I was one of the group. What an unexpected and heart-warming feeling, entirely brought on by a social networking website and a bunch of good people. Weird.

As far as my journey’s concerned, that’s about it. Over time, the group has expanded and developed. Some people don’t tweet as much as they used to, others much more as they find their own voice and their confidence builds. New folk are constantly popping up and joining in and bringing their own unique perspectives and experience.

There’s a real sense of community there. People help each other out with problems, both technical and personal. They support each other when bad things happen. There’s always someone you know online if you need to get something off your chest. And there’s lots and lots of laughter.

In truth, of course, Twitter is much more than just a 90’s chat-room. They were structured and limited, you were never quite sure to whom you were talking and they were the preserve of the nerd; too early in the life of the internet for normal folk to catch on, which made them and their users objects of ridicule.

Twitter is something else entirely. It’s a framework, provided by some very clever coders, precisely for normal folk to do with as we will. People keep tacking bits on. Twitpic. Blip. 12-Seconds. #-tagging of trend topics. Automated links to and from other websites (a link to this post will be Tweeted, within half an hour of me posting it, via a third-party site that connects WordPress.com and Twitter – brilliant!).

This is probably, if not the tip of the iceberg, at least just the beginning of the process. Now that Twitter’s really gathering momentum, how long is it going to be before they introduce skype-like voice chat, or live Twitter TV, or even full-on video conferencing?

Then again, maybe they won’t. Thus far, Twitter has stayed relatively free of the bloaty add-ons that plague sites like Facebook. There’s been the odd game, but people seem to treat them with disdain, and they quickly peter out. And maybe it’s that purity of purpose that will sustain Twitter’s popularity. Just enough extra functionality to be useful and no more.

The Twitter demographic is also slightly odd, and apparently not what the developers envisaged. By and large, we seem to be 30-40-somethings, in stable relationships, with young families. We’re not after a dating agency or somewhere to organise our weekend clubbing (although there have been a few real-live, Twiss-ups…) We’re just after a bit of a chat and a laugh, which Twitter provides with aplomb. It’s a virtual pub, and not one of those insufferable gastro-chains, either. This one serves proper beer, with twigs in.

Obviously, this is just my experience. I imagine there are groups of youngsters (oh God, did I just type that?) using it for their own nefarious means, and there are definitely professionals, spammers and the rest plugging away at whatever it is that they do. So here’s the final Twepiphany;

Twitter is whatever you want it to be*

*As long as you don’t want it to be MySpace, Facebook or MSN.

In the almost six months I’ve been using Twitter, it’s become like an old friend to me. Barely a day has passed when I haven’t logged on at some point. I’m no longer bothered about catching every. Single. Thing everyone says. I couldn’t do it; I follow too many people with too much to say ;-) Now, I just dip in and out when I feel like it. Shoot the breeze with whoever’s there. Or just watch for a bit. Whatever.

Do I think it will still be around in three years? Five? Who knows. There’s too much positive momentum, certainly in my little corner, for me to think it’ll just die quietly like Facebook seems to have done amongst my peers. But then, something new will come along. It always does.

It’s going to have to be pretty damn good, though, and it’s going to have to know how to fight.

GBN

Cold Cool

In the interests of ironic balance…
I’ve just taken another cold call, this time from t-mobile.
The caller was polite, courteous, understood that my needs were being fully met by my current phone, and bade me a cheery good evening without trying to press me. Top marks.
I feel like such a heel for having a dig at the general salesperson population now. There is at least one good one out there.
Timing. You’ve got to laugh.

GBN.

Cold Cull

I sometimes despair of accumulating  sufficient life experience or human interaction to fill a semi-regular blog.

The problem is I just don’t like people much and go out of my way to avoid talking to the ones I don’t know. There have been odd exceptions, but in general, I find that people just irritate me. They either want something, or they are dull but insistent, or scary, or arrogant, or just out on day-release. Whatever, they end up taking my time from me, and it’s mine goddammit. I value it. Leave me alone.

On the odd occasion that I’ve met people I actually like or admire, I invariably make three kinds of ass out of myself, retreat entirely into my shell, or punch them (ie, I turn into precisely the type of person I avoid).

Possibly this is why I like Twitter so much. It gives me the chance to get to know people a bit prior to meeting them (oh yes, I’ve met a few fellow twitterers, they do actually exist). Those I relate to, I follow, the rest can be safely ignored.

Anyway, this isn’t about Twitter, I’m stilllll working on that post. This is about odd interactions.

I took a phone call yesterday from a Scottish Power employee who started asking about my current supplier; usual spiel. Quite apart from my normal reticence, I was really not in the mood to be cold-called, so quite early on I said,

“I’m actually quite happy with my current supplier, so thanks, but no thanks.” to which she replied,

“But we can offer you a much better deal – Why won’t you…?”

I interrupted, a little curtly, perhaps, “Look, I’ve said I’m not interested. Thank you.”

She started to get a wee bit huffy at this point, “Well can I ask why you won’t even listen to what I’ve got to say?”

A number of replies crossed my mind, some polite, others less so, but oddly not the one that came out of my mouth, which surprised me by being the truth;

“Because I’m just dealing with the death of my Grandmother, and the electricity bill isn’t my main concern right now.”

I was quite calm when I said it, but as it came out I thought, rather nastily I’m afraid, ‘ha, that’ll shut the bitch up.’ and waited for the inevitable click of the line going dead. Remarkably, she wasn’t even phased,

“OK, well I’ll put you down for a follow up call in a little while, then.”

I’ll admit it; she’d nailed me. I was stunned. Not even a glimmer of remorse in her voice. Nothing to suggest I’d said anything other than “Sorry, the bath’s running and I’ve got to dash.”

“Um, no, I don’t want a follow-up call…” I managed.

“Oh, I don’t mean straight away – in a couple of months or so.” The cow almost sounded triumphant.

I rarely get riled – properly riled, that is – but whether intentionally or not, she had inserted a ballpoint pen into my recessed temper button and jabbed. Hard. Still, I kept it down to a low seethe,

“Now listen, I’ve told you I’m not interested, twice, and I’ve told you I don’t want a follow-up call, so *kindly* take my name off your list and do not call back.” This was all said slowly, and through gritted teeth.

“Well, I’m afraid you deal with the gas and electricity for your household so you *will* have to deal with this, so I’ll schedule that follow-up call.”

There was a pause while my incredulous brain processed what it had just heard.

“OK, here’s me dealing with it. I now want your full name and I want you to put me through to your supervisor directly. Your phone manner is appalling and you should be ashamed of yourself.”

Is what I briefly considered, but bit back, before dropping the call in the middle of whatever she’d carried on to say.

Maybe I should have said it, but the truth of the matter was that I really couldn’t be bothered to deal with her any more.

So, is it just me, or should I have expected a little more consideration and a little less hard-sell? I’ll tell you something for nothing, anyone identifying themselves to me as a Scottish Power employee is going to get very short shrift in the future and I don’t care *how* good their deals are.

It seems that, as a society, we’ve become so concerned with hitting targets (and I’m sure the world’s current financial predicament isn’t helping with this) that we’ve lost all concept of what customer service actually means, and that is a very sad state of affairs indeed. And it doesn’t help my aversion to chatting with the Freaks of the Unknown, either.

So here’s my new mission statement:- If I want to buy something, be it a CD or an Internet, groceries or gas, I will do my research *by myself*, pick a supplier on merit, and go and buy it. If you cold-call me, be glad I can’t fire modem sounds down the phone line any more and, really, don’t expect a sale.

GBN